How 'Mental Health Days' Hide A Broken Work Culture

Wellbeing breaks are increasingly a feature of office life. But, asks Katie Rosseinsky, could this just be ‘wellness-washing’ by companies and is it doing more harm than good?

- Katie Rosseinsky

If you’ve ever struggled with a mental health issue, you will know all too well that they can make the simplest of everyday tasks feel insurmountable. Making a phone call or sending an email might sap what little energy you had in the first place; even the most seemingly basic actions can become overwhelming. All of this conspires to make working very difficult indeed – it’s nigh on impossible to project a veneer of efficiency and capability when it feels like everything is falling apart inside your head.

A younger generation of employees is trying to combat this by booking off “mental health days” at work like their older colleagues would call in sick for migraines or a bout of flu. According to a new survey by workplace wellbeing platform Unmind, 49 per cent of respondents had taken time off work due to poor mental health; among workers aged between 16 and 25, this rose to 66 per cent.

This rise can be interpreted in two very different ways. The first is the more optimistic view that this rise in mental health breaks is actually a positive step – that it “can be attributed to greater awareness and reduced stigma surrounding mental health concerns”, as Dr Nick Taylor, Unmind’s CEO and co-founder, puts it. The second, though, is more troubling – that this increase is a symptom of a completely broken work culture where mental health is hailed as a “priority” but is not being tackled in any real way at all.